


That Which Was Promised

by Owlship



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AND THEY LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER SHUT UP, Episode Related, Episode: s08e03 The Long Night, F/M, First Time, Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Post-Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-16 16:57:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18695590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: Somehow, despite everything, he had truly thought that her sword would burn with flames. Jaime watches as the Dothraki's arakhs burst into conjured fire and can't help looking at Brienne standing to his right, flanking his weak side. She has Oathkeeper drawn already but there's only the familiar ripples of red in the gray steel, no hints of anything catching flame.It's not Lightbringer she wields, and she's not Azor Ahai.





	That Which Was Promised

**Author's Note:**

> I had zero intentions of writing any fic until the season was over, but then I was so distraught watching the Battle of Winterfell waiting for Brienne to die that when it ended with her still alive, I just _had_ to write something to decompress. This fic contains a few minor references to book canon, also I tweaked one or two things about the battle, but it's all small stuff.
> 
> Thanks to Primarybufferpanel & Youkaiyume for quickly reading this over for me!

Somehow, despite everything, he had truly thought that her sword would burn with flames. Jaime watches as the Dothraki's arakhs burst into conjured fire and can't help looking at Brienne standing to his right, flanking his weak side. She has Oathkeeper drawn already but there's only the familiar ripples of red in the gray steel, no hints of anything catching flame.

It's not Lightbringer she wields, and she's not Azor Ahai.

She notices him looking and turns to him, her face fierce and yet brittle in the dark gloom. Jaime musters a smile for her, or attempts to. He has a feeling his face resembles a grim rictus, and only part of that is something he can blame on the thrice-damned cold of the North.

Her eyes soften just slightly, barely visible through the dark.

"I once dreamed you had a burning sword, you know," he says to her with a nod in the direction of the flickering Dothraki arakhs burning in the distance.

Brienne snorts out a breath, graceless, but it's shaken away a little of the icy fear he could see creeping in under her stern armor. "Valyrian steel will do me just fine," she says.

"I had one too, of course," Jaime continues, nonsensical in the face of the battle they're about to face. Out in the field he can no longer hear the Dothraki screaming, and he wonders if it's because they're too busy focusing on killing, or being killed. The flames are gone, flickering out one by one or perhaps just being swallowed by the fog. He lowers his voice, though no one around them is paying attention to their quiet conversation, too wrapped up in their own thoughts of mortal terror and cold. "I dreamed it the night I left you at Harrenhal."

"Ser Jaime," is all that she says, a censure because now is not the time, a sigh because for once she had been the maiden being rescued, a flicker of longing for days before this long dark night. He can read her like a book, one where the letters only dance around _some_ of the time.

"Brienne," he says, tilting to her more fully. There's suddenly a wealth of words clawing at his throat to be said, pleas and promises and confessions. But his tongue is tied, choking in his mouth, and he can say nothing more.

"Sers," Podrick whispers, and they watch as the first horse comes running out of the foggy battleground, riderless.

It doesn't take very long after that for things to start really going to shit.

"Stand your ground!" Brienne shouts, seconds before the wave of wights hits them, a solid wall of flesh.

Jaime has been in battle before, but this is no ordinary battle. Most of the wights have no weapons of their own, no swords or spears or even clubs; they simply swarm like insects, teeth gnashing, desiccated fingers curled into claws. Some wear armor but many don't, poor bastards who were once farmers or merchants or some other class of smallfolk, falling to pieces as he stabs them with his sword.

Beside him Brienne is grunting and shouting as she fights; she never did learn not to give the game away, not that it matters against a foe like this, mindless and savage. He finds the noise comforting against the backdrop of metal against flesh and bone, a reassurance of her continued survival.

A wight gets him from behind and he's falling to the ground with an outraged shout of his own, swinging desperately with his useless golden hand and Widow's Wail. Hands scratch and scrabble at his armor, trying to pick it apart like the shell of a nut.

Then Brienne is there, stabbing a wight, grabbing his arm and heaving him back upright. Jaime adjusts his grip on the hilt of his sword and she nods at him, grim-faced.

He barely has time to start swinging again before the air is bursting into flame; the dragons.

It's not nearly enough.

Even with lines of wights charred and burning more just keep coming, an endless sea of dead.

Jaime keeps slashing and stabbing with his sword though his arm is already feeling the strain, weaker than his right was and further from his prime; around him the air is filled with the stench of burning hair and flesh. It's not a battle, he thinks, it's just butchery.

Then the fog swells, coalesces into a wall of burning-cold white, and he looks to see Brienne staring at it as if she's personally offended by its existence before pivoting to take down another wight.

The battle feels unending, and Jaime loses sight of Brienne more than once in the snow that's now blasting at them on the wind, his heart lurching and pounding with terror each time until he spots her ungainly form again, and he can suck in a breath of air.

He doesn't know who gives the order first but Brienne is shouting at them to fall back, and Jaime knows that they've already lost. Knows with perfect clarity that they will retreat further and further inwards until the last of them dies defending the crypts with the women and children because the dead are inexhaustible, innumerable. He keeps pace with her as she barrels through the killing field, stepping over their own fallen men and trying not to get swept underfoot themselves.

Brienne stays at the gate when they reach it, directing the flow of men fleeing, and so he stays besides her, echoing her orders in the strongest voice he can muster. He tries not to meet anyone's eyes; they're terrified, each man aware that he's going to die, and the last thing he needs is to have his own confidence shaken.

When the last of the fleeing men have been shepherded inside, Jaime somehow finds himself up on the wall, looking down at the Unsullied being slaughtered by a never-ending flow of wights.

"Why aren't they lighting the trenches?" Brienne asks, her voice hoarse.

"They're trying," he says, and points to a flaming arrow that flies through the air only to sputter out against the snow-covered wood.

She frowns, and he can hear the creak of her leather gloves as she adjusts her grip on Oathkeeper, and Jaime is once again struck with the realization that they're both going to die tonight and that he has to say something to her, has to tell her the real reason he came North, the real reason he's dying by her side instead of sitting on his ass safe in King's Landing with his twin.

"Brienne," he says, urgency in his voice.

She swings her head like a horse flicking away flies as she turns to him, uglier than ever with gore flecked all over her face.

"If we don't make it," Jaime starts to say.

"We will," she says, intractably pigheaded.

"If we don't," he says again.

" _Jaime_ ," Brienne says, her voice low and serious, warning him to go no further. "The dragons will see the signal in a moment."

"Even if they light the bloody trenches," he says, gesturing wildly with his right arm, "Can't you see? We're fucked." He keeps his voice down; the men surely know that they're all fucked already, but there's no need to incite them to flee rather than die fighting.

"You give up too easily," she retorts, chin jutting up in the air. "If the Night King is felled, so are all his wights."

Jaime feels himself itch with the urge to reel her in and kiss her stubborn, idiotic lips, to put down their swords and spend their last minutes doing something eminently more enjoyable. He takes a half a step closer to her, eyes locked on hers, but then the ground below is bursting into flames.

"The trenches," Brienne says, turning away from him to lean down over the parapet, then cranes her head back to look upwards. "I don't see the dragons."

He follows her gaze; the cloud cover is thick, but he can't see the sweep of dark wings, the blaze of fire as more sections of the trench ignites. "We should knight whoever got a torch out there," he says lightly.

She doesn't look as if she appreciates the jape, but her eyes are on him and Jaime can only smile in response, as thin as it feels on his cracked lips.

For a glorious minute it seems as if they've achieved a stalemate, the wights repelled by the flaming trench, and then they do the unthinkable and start falling over themselves, smothering sections of the fires with their own bodies, creating bridges for more of the undead army to cross over.

He inhales sharply.

"Seven Hells," Brienne curses, and he has a quip ready about how surely this qualifies as an entirely new eighth Hell by now, but rather than give it tongue he reaches out with his left hand, sword awkwardly held away, and grabs a hold of her own gloved hand.

She looks at him and he sees, finally, that she understands. That they truly won't be making it out of this alive.

She nods, sharp, her eyes blinking rapidly a few times before she turns to call down to the courtyard, demanding men to fill out the walls. Her hand slips out of his and he directs men to their new positions, watching as the wights simply climb over each other to assail the tall walls of Winterfell.

He loses track of her, swept up in this new wave of fighting as wights drag themselves up and over the walls. Jaime stabs downwards and the wights crumble to pieces only to be replaced a breath later. He slashes and stabs and hacks away at dead flesh without pause, knowing that to falter would mean his death.

He still can't see Brienne and fear is an animal in his belly, gnawing at his guts. Shouting her name would be stupid, and probably distract her enough to fall on a wight's blade if she hasn't already, but still the impulse swells through him.

His own distraction is nearly the end of him; a wight slams into him from the front, then another, pushing him up against the wall. Jaime can hear the shards of dragonglass affixed to the crenelation snapping under his armor as he grunts and shouts, trying to get either hand free, the wights snapping their jaws and growling their eerie breathless growl.

It's Brienne who comes to his rescue, of course, shouting as she hacks wildly with Oathkeeper, no finesse in her swings, just pure raw power.

The wights fall to pieces beneath her Valyrian steel and Jaime locks eyes with her for a moment, a precious moment, taking in her face illuminated from the trenches still burning down below. Then he's calling out a warning for her to duck and the fight is back on, only now he can sense her fighting at his back, moving in tandem with him as if they've rehearsed it.

_Do you want to dance, Milady?_ he thinks, a gasp of hysterical laughter trying to wrench itself from his mouth. It's better than any dance he's ever had, even if this turn around the floor is going to leave them both dead at the end of the night. Up above, the dragons roar. In the corner of his eye he can see blue flames mixing with red and he shudders convulsively at what that means for their forces.

The wights just keep coming, piling up on the ground. It's lucky that they don't bleed, Jaime thinks, or they'd lose their footing in an instant.

He loses himself in the swing of his arm, the reverberations of strikes that land. The wights aren't smart enough to dodge and block half the time, and if they weren't seemingly endless in numbers he would say that perhaps they stand a chance after all.

The fighting ebbs, and he braces himself for another attack, glancing at Brienne standing tall next to him. But her eyes are on something else entirely and he follows her gaze, heart sinking at what he sees.

The wights are dead men, and so it stands to reason that whatever foul magic had made them, might make more. Their own dead stand again, silent, blue eyes blazing in the darkness.

For a moment they all- the dead and the living- simply stand there, dumbstruck, and then with a shout Brienne takes a swing at what had once been one of the soldiers under her command. Jaime gives a yell of his own and follows suit, the wights not even fighting back.

Down in the courtyard he sees the crowd part and he knows, he _knows_ , that it is the Night King himself who glides through, the air seeming to grow darker and colder from his very presence.

The wights begin fighting again, and in the scant seconds he has between blows Jaime just prays that Brienne doesn't get it in her head to try and attack the Night King herself.

She does, of course, the stubborn, ugly, pigheaded, foolish heroic wench. "We have an opening!" she shouts, as if the Night King isn't surrounded by a dozen White Walkers on top of who knows how many newly-raised wights.

" _No_ ," he hears himself say in the stern voice of his father, and he croaks his throat clear and tries again. "Brienne, we must hold the wall!"

"The wall is overrun," she counters, blade slicing clean through a wight's neck. She squares her shoulders, head lowered like a bull about to charge, and makes to barrel her way through. To his horror, if not surprise, the masses of wights on the stairs quickly overwhelm her.

Jaime shouts her name, high and panicked, and with the help of Pod- he hadn't realized the boy was even still there, in all the chaos- he unearths her from the gnawing mass of undead. She's bleeding, or perhaps the freshly dead wights are bleeding; he can't tell through the smoke and dark.

"You mad bitch!" he shouts at her, shaking her in his grip.

"Jaime," she says, her eyes wide and earnest, still so hopeful even after all this death. "We have to try."

He growls and looks around, killing the wights he sees almost as an afterthought. "We'll have to jump," he says, dreading the rough landing that awaits them.

"There's a cart with supplies we can land on," Podrick pipes up with, and jerks his head.

Brienne nods, and the three of them- four, for a while, as they pick up a soldier, until he's unceremoniously dragged backwards over the wall- make their way to this supposed cart. It's still a long drop and Jaime fears that they won't be able to fight on afterwards, but Brienne hardly pauses to consider as she steps off the edge.

He follows immediately, landing just to the side of her, and hears the boy crash down besides him.

They don't make it three paces before they're pushed back, and back, until their shoulders hit the stone wall and there isn't anywhere left to be pushed to.

_Now do you believe me_ , Jaime thinks, unable to take his eyes off the attacking wights for even long enough to glance at Brienne. They're armed with weapons now, Winterfell's own swords and axes turned against the living. They're all going to die and his only consolation is that he might go before she does, might be able to catch a blow meant to fell her instead. In his long-ago dream his sword went out while hers burned on, he remembers, and it adds just a little more power to his aching, weary arms as he swings Widow's Wail.

He can tell Brienne is still alive at his side by the noises she makes, grunts and yells and- a shout of pain, and Jaime does look then, he can't do anything else, his sword moving to kill the wight attacking her without his conscious decision. She staggers but doesn't fall, and he suspects that she isn't really feeling a single thing.

_You have to live_ , he thinks fiercely, even though he knows it isn't going to happen. At his other side Podrick stumbles against him, and Jaime thinks the boy is done for, but he steadies himself.

They fight for hours. For days. Centuries pass as they hack and slash at the undead, bodies piling up around their feet, the faces of their own men staring up blank-eyed at them. All he can taste is ash and blood, all he can hear the meaty thuds of sword hitting flesh, even Brienne's noises tapering off as the battle wears on.

Jaime can feel himself faltering, his strokes getting slower, weaker. _It won't be long now_ , he thinks. His vision has narrowed to just the few inches in front of him, colors washed away in a haze of smoky red.

It takes a long moment to realize that the fighting has stopped. He keeps cutting and stabbing until he looks up from the corpse at his feet, and there are no more wights in view. He looks to his right where Brienne is holding her own against the wall, panting hard. Her eyes meet his and he can see his own surprise mirrored in them.

"Did we win?" Podrick says, his voice little more than a rasping whisper.

As far as Jaime's eyes can see, there's nothing but corpses where once wights stood, a few living survivors dotted here and there among piles of bodies. He turns again to Brienne and barks out a disbelieving laugh, only for it to come out as a cough.

"Jaime!" she says as he doubles over, his lungs unable to stop coughing now that he's started. It's the smoke, he knows, the smoke and frigid air and maybe one or two of the blows he took which his armor didn't absorb.

He waves his golden hand flippantly, trying to signal that he only needs to catch his breath.

Podrick buttresses him from his left, but he suspects the boy is leaning on him as much for his own support as anything else. Not really a boy anymore, he supposes, not if he's lived through this longest night.

"I can't tell what's your blood or not," Brienne says, suddenly right in front of him as he gets the coughing under control, Oathkeeper sheathed and her hands lifting his head up towards the light of the torch.

"Brienne," he says, a grin growing on his face. He attempts to put his sword into its scabbard and fails; Pod takes it from him and he lets him, wanting his hand free. He puts his hand on the side of Brienne's face, cupping her cheek. "We're alive."

"And I'd like us all to stay that way," she says, probing at what Jaime suspects is a gash on the side of his head by the sudden sharp spike of pain he feels.

"We're _alive_ ," he repeats, and slides his hand to the back of her neck, drawing her down. He means to press his forehead to hers, like he might do with a brother-at-arms, giddy off the rush of being alive after such overwhelming odds- but Brienne ducks her head too far, and before he knows what he's about, their lips are pressing together.

She tastes like blood and sweat, decay, the metallic tang of a well-fought battle. He's sure he tastes much the same. It could be just a chaste expression, a spontaneous celebration of life, but now that he's here Jaime can't help but pour all his pent-up frustration and longing into the kiss, all the things he couldn't say to her before the battle spoken now through the language of his body as he clutches tightly to her.

As he sweeps his tongue against her lips, seeking entrance, she breaks away with a gasp. He considers pulling her back to him, kissing her some more until they're rutting on the ground with no care for their injuries and the bodies piled high around them, but he lets her go.

The both of them are mangled as if they've fought through all seven Hells, and he at least aches in every inch of his flesh now that he's able to become aware of his body again.

At his side Podrick clears his throat and says, "Your sword?"

Jaime hates to tear his eyes away from Brienne but he needs the coordination to get his sword sheathed, and by the time he looks back at her, she's scanning the devastated courtyard, a frown on her face.

"We should gather the survivors," she says without looking at him.

They should, probably. They should go get the women and children and other non-fighters out of the crypt, and see what's left of the Starks, and start tending to the wounded. But Jaime grabs her wrist and she turns to him, still frowning.

"Brienne, we're alive," he says, like those are the only words he knows.

Her frown softens just slightly, but she doesn't completely relent. "Pod, are you able to walk?" she asks.

"Aye," he says, and Jaime spares a look at the boy, then grimaces. He's clearly wounded, listing to the side and covered in scratches.

"We need to get to the crypt," Brienne says. "They're most likely to be able to help him."

Jaime nods, wearily tearing himself away from the wall that feels like it's been supporting him. He has to let go of her wrist to grab at Podrick's shoulder, since as it turns out he _can't_ really walk, at least not unaided. They stumble over corpses, some long-dead and some still bleeding, calling for survivors as they go.

That Wildling is still alive, Jaime notices with weary distaste. At least one dragon is dead and he isn't sure whether he hopes it was the Night King's or not, considering what Daenerys is most likely going to have her dragons do next. Of the forces that massed to defend Winterfell, he estimates that maybe a quarter are left.

Inside the crypt is a sight he hasn't prepared for: bodies of women and children strewn across the floor, the sarcophagi burst open and the decayed bodies within clearly caught in the same struggle that had taken place up above.

Of course, he realizes as the scene registers to his battle-weary mind, why should he have assumed that the only dead risen for the battle were the ones from out on the battlefield?

Brienne sucks in a startled breath next to him and jerks forward, and Jaime tries not to let himself feel afraid for the fate of his brother, who was supposed to have been kept safe and sound.

"Lady Sansa?" Brienne calls, stooping down to enter the low-ceilinged crypt.

They find Sansa, and Tyrion, and even Varys, whole and relatively unharmed. Jaime shudders in relief and drops to his knees, pulling his little brother into a hug.

"We should have emptied the crypts," Tyrion says, voice muffled against his shoulder but otherwise sounding completely unbothered by the experience, as if it had been a thought experiment.

Jaime laughs, and tries not to let it become a sob. "Glad you're still alive, too," he says. He pulls away from Tyrion and looks around the rest of the crypt; Brienne is talking with Sansa, Podrick leaning against the wall while an older woman starts to fuss over him.

"Oh, I was never worried about you," Tyrion says. There's blood on his skin, splashed on his face and his hands. Jaime is pretty sure it isn't from his own armor. "Are these all the survivors?"

"Just the ones we came across," Jaime replies. He sways as he gets back up to his feet, vision going gray and flat for a moment before righting itself.

"You should get yourself to a bed," Tyrion says, and Jaime protests, but only weakly. He is undeniably exhausted, far less a victorious lion and more like one of Tommen's kittens after such a protracted and merciless battle.

Sansa appears with Brienne in tow and says, "The castle should still be intact. They wouldn't have bothered with it empty."

Her words are a dismissal, and he nods in understanding. Brienne opens her stubborn mouth to protest and Jaime takes her wrist in his hand, silencing her. Now that he's touched her once and gotten away with it he wants to do so again and again, wants to feel her living skin under his fingertips for the rest of his life.

"The dead aren't going anywhere," he says quietly, and can't help the wry smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth. "Not anymore, at least."

"There are still wounded men out there," she retorts, clearly not appreciating the joke, but does not pull out of his grip.

"And we are in much better shape to find them," Tyrion says.

"Brienne," Jaime says, still quiet.

She breathes out and looks at Sansa beseechingly, but Sansa only nods. "Get some rest," she says.

Brienne nods in acknowledgement and allows Jaime to lead her away from the crypt, his fingers still wrapped around her wrist. He falters halfway there, because he's been spending his nights thus far in Tyrion's room, and the thought of sleeping there alone right now is an anathema to him.

She looks at him, and he ducks his head away from her gaze for a moment, before raising his eyes to meet hers. "My Lady," he says, and then has no idea how to go on from there.

Brienne watches him silently, her eyes sweeping over his body, undoubtedly checking to see if he's wounded. His gaze catches on her lips, chapped with the cold and bleeding slightly as they crack; he can recall the feel of them on his perfectly and wonders if he'll ever repeat the experience. If she'll ever let him kiss her again, or if it will be something forever left on the battlefield like so many corpses.

He hopes she'll let him kiss her again, hopes she'll take him up on the offer he's made without words by coming up to the gods-forsaken North alone, defying his sister and Queen for her.

Jaime opens his mouth, but closes it again without speaking. What else is there to say? Either she will have him or she won't, and he'll follow her regardless.

Finally she says, "I have cloth for bandages in my room."

That's as good an excuse as any, and Jaime nods.

True to Sansa's prediction the inner parts of the castle suffered little damage- there's the occasional cluster of bodies here and there, but few signs of actual fighting. Brienne's room is almost identical to Tyrion's, with the exception of a stand for her armor in the corner and no straw pallet in front of the fireplace.

As soon as they've thrown the torch into the fireplace to catch Jaime drops himself wearily into the only chair and starts doing his best to get himself out of his armor, letting his golden hand fall to the rushes without a care. He doesn't fight it when Brienne crouches next to him and helps, nor does she protest when he does the same for her in turn.

Their clothes are ruined, covered in blood and char, and he strips his gambeson and undershirt off without a second thought.

"Ser Jaime," Brienne says, admonishing, and he looks up at her.

"Well I certainly don't intend to sleep like this," he says.

She opens her mouth and closes it without saying anything, frowning. Then she says, "You're not sleeping here."

"Aren't I?" he retorts, and then feels his mouth drop out of the casual, careless smile that was building there. "You're bleeding," he says, and nods towards her side.

Brienne's frown deepens and her hand reaches for the jagged cut in her tunic, reddish with fresh blood. "I'll bandage it myself," she says, and he shakes his head before he can stop himself.

"Let me?" he asks, and she hesitates, but it isn't as if they have a maester to call on.

She nods, and fetches a roll of bandages while he pours some water into a bowl he is certain was meant to be for washing faces, not battle-wounds. A wash sounds like a very appealing idea at the moment, blood drying tacky on his soot-stained skin, but there's probably only enough water here to clean their injuries.

Brienne sits down gingerly on the chair and he kneels next to her.

"You'll have to lift your shirt," he says after a moment where nothing happens.

She looks down at him like she's scared of him, which is ridiculous when just an hour ago they were cutting down the risen dead side by side. Then she grabs the hem of her tunic and hitches it up just far enough to expose the wound in her side, a little below her ribs. Just in the seam where her breastplate would have ended, he thinks as he dips a scrap of cloth into the bowl of water to start dabbing at the cut.

It missed her bowels, which seems obvious considering she's still alive so long after getting it, but is a comfort nonetheless. Jaime washes away the drying blood and then clumsily wraps her abdomen with the strips of bandages, trying to get the right amount of pressure.

"I'll tie it," she says when he's reached the end of the bandage, and he doesn't protest as she takes the cloth from his hand, deftly securing it.

When the wound is bandaged Brienne looks at him, her eyes blue and red-rimmed and _alive_.

He dips the rag back into the reddish murky water at his side, then reaches for her hand, laying it against the stump of his right arm, and gently sponges away the gore on her skin.

"You don't have to wash me," she says, but doesn't jerk away from his touch.

"Let me?" he says in reply, the words coming from some unfamiliar place inside of himself. Jaime is- _was_ \- Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, born heir to Casterly Rock before that, knighted since he was fifteen years old. He hasn't ever had to do something as subservient as wash someone's hands for them, hasn't ever _wanted_ to before.

But he wants to now. He wants to show Brienne a bit of tenderness, a bit of care; to show her the devotion she deserves as the most loyal and honorable knight in the Seven Kingdoms.

She nods in a jerk, and he washes as far up her arms as he can get before the sleeves get in the way, then with a frown gets up to discard the filthy water. When he turns back again, bowl of clean water in hand, she looks lost. Vulnerable, like now that the fighting is over she doesn't know what to anchor herself to.

Jaime dips a fresh scrap of cloth into the water and starts to wipe clean her face, revealing her pale skin, the deep bruises, the smattering of freckles under the grit. Her eyes watch him the entire time in silence, so blue he almost thinks maybe he doesn't need the long night to end when there's a piece of the daylit sky right here.

Her nose is crooked, her teeth horsey, her jaw angular and her forehead jutting. She is hardly a beauty. But to him she is beyond such shallow measures, more dear to him than- he swallows hard, and has to look away, pretending to wring out the rag- more dear to him than anyone else.

Her hand on his startles him, and she takes the rag from his lax grip. She places one hand on the back of his head and uses the other to start wiping off his face, and Jaime collapses again to his knees next to her, leaning in to the touch as if it is his benediction.

When she has gone over his entire face he takes her hand, and kisses the damp palm of it. "My Lady," he says.

"I'm not a Lady," Brienne says, the words sounding reflexive, and he presses his smile to the palm of her hand.

"No, you're not. You're a knight, now," he says, watching the expression on her face. The pride, the joy, the barest hint of embarrassment as if she could possibly think she doesn't deserve it. He kisses the thin skin of her wrist, where he can feel her beating pulse against his lips.

"Ser Jaime," she says, and he looks up at her through his eyelashes. She falters, whatever else she was going to say not leaving her lips.

He leans in against her, clasping her hand tight in his, wrapping his right arm around her waist. The fabric of her tunic is rough and stiff with blood against his cheek, reeking of fire and death, but he can feel the warmth of her skin underneath if he concentrates.

Her other hand is still in his hair, fingers threaded through the blood-crusted strands. Her grip tightens and then relaxes, and she begins to move her hand, stroking along his skull as if he is a favored pet of hers. Jaime sighs against her stomach and then lets his head drop down to rest in her lap, though the angle is awkward.

He could sleep like this, he thinks. He's certainly exhausted enough to give it a go, eyes sliding shut.

"To bed," Brienne says, her voice pitched low.

He wants to say something witty about it, imply some salacious meaning, but instead he just sighs again and forces himself to his feet.

Her hands leave him and he feels bereft, standing there shirtless and bruised in the quiet of her room, spattered with gore. She touches the hem of her tunic and then without looking at him pulls it over her head, leaving her bare to the waist.

His breath stutters and he nearly swallows his tongue.

"It's too dirty to sleep in," she says defensively, half turned away from him. It only serves to make the meagre curve of her breast stand out against the muscle of her chest even more, the slight dip of her thick waist catching the firelight. She hasn't bared herself in anger, like she did half a lifetime ago in the baths of Harrenhal, but rather he suspects she's done so now because she finally trusts him.

She shouldn't; even half dead with exhaustion as he is, Jaime feels his body stir at the sight of her. Dark bruises mottle nearly every inch of her pale skin, clotted red scabs of scratches not worth bandaging, new marks cutting across old scars. She is every inch a warrior, a knight with thickly muscled limbs and calloused fingers, and yet- there's the slight softening of her frame that makes her undeniably womanly. The maidenly flush of her cheeks, the swell of barely-visible breasts, and his cock twitches as he recalls the nest of hair he glimpsed between her legs.

He swallows hard and looks away, then starts undoing the laces of his trousers. He expects her to squawk out a protest but she's silent, watching him with wide blue eyes. He shoves his trousers down his hips and then discovers that he neglected to take off his boots first, and he hears Brienne give a stilted, oddly girlish giggle as he bends to wrestle with them.

When he's done undressing he sees that she's already climbing into the bed, wearing nothing save the blankets which she pulls up around herself. The sight of her bare body sends a thrill through him and he sucks in a hitching breath, trying to control his reactions.

She settles under the blankets and then looks at him, her face blazing red, eyes conspicuously not looking lower than the height of his shoulders.

Jaime smirks and does his best impression of stalking forward, trying to remember how it felt to be a young lion again, proud and whole, the ruler of the fucking world. But as he moves he can feel every ache in his body, how the cold has seeped in deep under his skin, the throb of his cut-off hand. He's not that young lion anymore and he never will be again.

He stops at the edge of the bed and reaches out, nearly forgetting to use his left hand. Brienne takes his hand and gives a gentle tug, barely there at all, and he follows her down into the bed.

They should sleep. It's been a long day, the longest day he's ever experienced. But when he's next to her on the bed he can't resist leaning in and kissing her. It's a more tender kiss than the one they shared in the courtyard with death still all around them.

She gasps but this time he doesn't let her break away, he chases her lips and draws her into another kiss, another, until she's pressing against him eagerly, naked bodies separated by the layer of blankets covering her.

"Jaime," she says, her voice a hoarse whisper.

"Tell me to stop and I will," he says even as he moves to press a kiss to the sharp angle of her jaw, the notch under her ear. "I will, I swear it."

But she doesn't tell him to stop. Brienne threads the fingers of one hand through his hair and brings the other down to his chest, feeling the muscles there. He coaxes her mouth open, sure she's never kissed this way, if indeed she's ever kissed before him at all. He doesn't remember his first kiss- it was Cersei, of course, Cersei who was his first and his everything for so long.

But he doesn't want to think of his twin here in this room and he keeps his eyes open instead, watching Brienne go cross-eyed to look at him as he kisses her, rolling her without thought to put her underneath him. Her body is strong, though it's as battered as his is, and he doesn't even pretend to doubt whether she can handle his weight.

She moans and he shudders at the sound, suddenly and achingly hard, cock rutting against the fabric between them.

"Brienne," he murmurs against her skin, "Brienne, we're _alive_."

Under the blankets he can feel her legs spreading for him, her body arching up into the press of his weight, and Jaime can't stand the barrier between them any more. He forces himself away from her mouth and starts shoving at the blankets, dragging them down.

He halfway expects her to protest, to clutch at the coverings, but Brienne shimmies them along, pushing the blankets to rest down at their feet.

He groans as he lowers himself back down, his skin touching hers all over.

"Jaime," she says, and he raises his head to meet her eyes. Her beautiful eyes are wide, uncertain, but not scared.

He kisses her thick lips, then the soft tenderness of her throat where he can feel her pulse beating strong and steady under her skin. Somehow, against all the odds, they are both alive. Maybe during the battle they died and this is their afterlife- but surely, he hasn't earned himself a spot in Heaven alongside her.

He drags his hand down her body, palming the peaked jut of her breast, caressing the hard flesh of her stomach. She shivers and wraps her arms around his shoulders, thighs parting to allow him into the cradle of her hips.

"Brienne," he kisses into her skin, over and over. His fingers reach further down, lower and lower until he's brushing through thick hair and a sudden, shocking wetness. "Gods," he groans, fingers skating through her heated folds, the intimate place he never thought she would let him touch. "Tell me I can," he says, barely touching her, waiting for her permission to do something for perhaps the first time since he's met her.

"Please, Jaime," she replies in an instant, hips bucking against him so that his fingers slip through the outer lips and into her cunt proper, and they gasp in unison.

She's so wet for him, so hot, so achingly alive. Jaime fumbles, awkward with his left hand- he's had hardly any practice at it like this without his good hand, feels like a green boy having his first tumble- but he finds the swollen nub of her clitoris and glides a finger over it, and she throws her head back and lets out a noise that would be more at home on the battlefield.

He ducks his head and brushes a nipple with his lips, laves it with the flat of his tongue before sucking it inside his mouth. Brienne grabs at his hair and tugs, just sharp enough to really get his attention.

He raises his head, but she isn't trying to tell him anything, eyes wide and mouth panting, chest heaving and hips rolling against his touch.

Some part of him wants to tease her, to ask if she's ever felt like this before, if she's thought about him late at night and touched herself, but more than that Jaime just wants there to be no space between them, wants to be joined with her as intimately as he possibly can. He doesn't want to make her feel made fun of or embarrassed, wants her to be as fierce and as confident in his arms now as she is on the battlefield.

"Brienne," he says, and presses an open-mouthed kiss to the hard plate of her breastbone. "Can I; I want to have you. Want to be inside you." It's cruder than what she deserves, but she's a knight, a soldier. She wouldn't suffer flowery words.

She lets out a hitching breath and in answer reaches between them to touch his cock, pulsing at the touch. His hips jerk forward, cockhead rubbing against her belly.

"I want to feel you," Brienne says, sounding some strange mix of shy and brash, and he moans as much from her touch as her words.

He helps her guide him to her entrance, fingers tangling together sticky between their bodies. "You're sure?" he pants out, pausing with the head of his cock barely pressing against her, not yet breaching her. Not yet taking her maidenhood.

She blinks her big blue eyes up at him and nods once, and he can't do anything but obey what his body is telling him, sliding in slow inches into her wet heat.

Gods but she's tight around him, muscles clutching him as he sinks down to the root. Jaime leans up- strange, how apparent their different heights are now, how different it is compared to _no don't think about her not now_ \- and kisses her open mouth, tongues tangling almost lazily, both of them more focused on what's going on between their legs.

"Gods," he moans, taking a moment to shut his eyes so he doesn't lose himself before they've even begun.

"Jaime," she says, her voice husky, her hands clutching at his back.

He starts to move, tries to keep the pace slow and gentle, but Brienne bucks her hips against his, urges him faster, harder, until he's all but slamming into her, an intimate battle taking place on a rickety bed that really wasn't built to accommodate two people of their size. She sounds as if she's being gutted, but her face is screwed up in pleasure, not pain. If she wanted him off of her there's nothing he could do to stop her.

He chants her name as he plunges inside of her over and over, braced above her on his forearms, cursing the fact that he can't reach out and touch her as he'd like with only one damn hand.

Despite the frigid Northern air there's sweat building on her skin, slick between them; Jaime licks it off her neck, uncaring of the tang of death still lingering there. He mouths at the curved jut of her collarbone, bends himself over her far enough to get to her breast.

She moans out his name as he kisses her breast, voice rising to a shrill pitch as he sucks a swollen nipple into his mouth.

"Touch yourself," he tells her when he's let the nipple fall from his lips, nuzzling his way to her other breast. "You know how, don't you?"

She doesn't reply with words, but he feels her lift a hand from where she's clutching at him and brings it down between their straining bodies.

He moans and grinds himself against her, deep as he can get, utterly surrounded by her living heat. Brienne tightens the grip of her thighs where they wrap around him, hips rocking against his as she rubs her clit.

He looks up at her face and she's staring at him, her skin patchy red under the bruising, lips swollen. Objectively ugly and yet overwhelming for the rush of emotion her homely face brings up in him. Miraculously, Jaime lasts just long enough that he's sure she starts to peak before his own climax sweeps over him, burning him up all along his spine as he tries, and fails, to pull himself out in time.

He collapses against her, knowing that even as she grunts at the added weight that she can handle it, handle him. She's strong enough.

"Jaime," she breathes, and he presses kisses to her neck, working his way back up to her mouth.

"My Lady," he says, "My knight. We're alive, Brienne."

She makes a strange noise against his lips, and he tries to pull back enough to see her face, but she wraps her arms tightly around him, keeping him in place. Jaime struggles against the hold, but not enough to free himself; after a moment he relaxes himself, shifting his weight to be slightly less than completely on top of her.

Abruptly he realizes that she's crying, and feels a wave of hot-cold terror spike through him.

"Brienne?" he whispers, afraid that he's done something horribly wrong. She'd wanted it, wanted him, he is as sure of it as he is sure that he wants her- but what if he's wrong? "Brienne," he repeats, reaching out to brush a tear away from her cheek.

She shakes her head, and rather than fight him off she turns her head, tucking her face into the space between them. Not the action of a woman who regrets her bed partner, he thinks, but he hasn't actually known that many women. Only one other on such an intimate scale and even if he wanted, he doesn't think his memories of Cersei will do him much help here.

He's not adept at comforting crying women, or anyone else, really. With Brienne crying in his arms moments after they'd fucked- after they'd _made love_ , or so it seemed to him- he is completely at sea. He settles for stroking her hair and making quiet noises not quite like a shush, since he always hated it when people would shush him when he was a child and crying over something or other. Just noises to let her know that he's there, that he pains for her.

"It's over," he tells her, and she gives a shuddering, hitching sigh. "It's over," he says again, "We survived. Podrick survived. Your precious Starks survived. That Wildling who wants to carry you off survived."

That has Brienne letting out an awkward noise, like it's halfway trying to be a laugh.

"We almost didn't," she says, her voice thick.

"Aye," he agrees, "But we did."

She turns her face just enough to peek up at him, her precious blue eyes swollen and reddened. There's a slight upturning of her mouth, the barest hint that she's done with her crying jag.

Jaime kisses her cheek, tasting the salt of her tears on her skin. "We're alive," he says, and this time she nods.

"We're alive," she agrees, and presses their lips together. She glances down at their bodies pressed flush against each other, and her face turns a darker shade of red under the bruising.

He does crack a smile at that, purposefully wiggling himself against her as if getting comfortable, not letting her forget that they're both completely naked and sticky with shared fluids. "Something the matter?" he says innocently.

"It's cold," Brienne says rather than protest their arrangement, and he reluctantly peels himself away from her. Before grabbing for the blankets though he stumbles to the basin of water and wipes himself clean, then returns with a cloth for her.

He wipes the tears off her face before cleaning between her thighs, wondering if he should address the fact that he spilled inside of her. They'll need to get a hold of moon tea, just in case. He can't father a bastard on her-

Jaime stops still and blinks, eyes finding Brienne's face.

"What?" she says, shifting uncomfortably on the bed, already moving to reach for the blankets to cover herself back up.

"Marry me," he blurts out.

She stares at him.

"I'm not Kingsguard anymore, there's no reason we couldn't," he says.

Her face darkens. "You don't have to marry me just because you bedded me," she says.

He shakes his head and tosses away the damp rag so he can crawl back into bed with her. "Brienne," he says, drawing himself close to her. "I'd marry you even if we hadn't fucked. I... Gods, Brienne, can't you see how much you mean to me? I'd give you anything; everything that I have, that I _am_ , is yours already."

"The battle has made you delirious," she says, turning away from him.

"Don't start with that," he says, putting his hand on her shoulder to roll her back to face him. "Will you give me an answer if I ask tomorrow?" Jaime leans in and kisses her cheek. "I'll ask every day if I must."

"You can't want me!" she says in a burst. "I'm ugly and I'm mannish and you're only in my bed because your blood is heated from the battle. I've lived with soldiers, I know how men get after there's fighting."

It's his turn to stare at her in shock. "Do not presume to tell me how I feel, wench," he says, and she flinches at his icy tone. He forces himself to take a steadying breath. "I've been in many battles in my years, and never _once_ have I sought out someone's bed. I'm with you because I want to be. You, not anyone else."

Brienne looks at him with a raw expression on her face, and he ducks his head down to press a kiss to her frowning lips.

"Ser Brienne," he says, staring steadily into her eyes. "I knighted you because there is no one more deserving of the title. I came North to fight by _your_ side." She tries to look away from him, and he puts his hand on her chin, gently steering her to look at him as he speaks. "I lay with you because there is no one else who can make me feel the way that you do. If you truly don't wish to marry me, then I won't press you further. I'll let that Wildling carry you off beyond the Wall to bear a dozen gigantic redheaded children if that would make you happy. But don't try and tell me what I can or cannot feel."

She sniffs heavily, and he rather suspects she might start crying again, which is an alarming thought. Jaime never really considered Brienne the type to cry- young and female she may be, but she's hardly the sort to swoon and weep- but to his relief though her eyes gleam in the dawn light coming through her window, no tears fall.

"I think we should get some sleep," she says after a moment.

"Aye," he agrees, and presses in to kiss her again because he can. He finally climbs in under the blankets, sighing in relief as he lays down properly for the first time in what feels like years. The bed is only filled with straw, the window letting in a draft, but Brienne lets him lay his head against her chest and wrap his arms around her middle and that makes it better than any featherbed he's ever slept in. "We'll discuss it more in the morning."

"It's already morning," she points out, eyes looking towards the lightening sky through the window.

"And we're alive to see it," Jaime says. He breathes in the scent of her skin and contemplates how to make his proposal more palatable to her, ways to make her assured of his sincerity. He has time to do so now, with the dead defeated and the sun rising once more as it should.


End file.
